In 2000, at the end of the last Comiket convention of that year, Type-Moon released TsukihimeEroge is a visual novel about vampires. 25 years later you can play its remake. Tsukihime is a piece of blue moon glass.a game that not only updates the fantasy part of the narrative, but also makes an important part of gaming history more accessible.
Following traditional visual novel design, Tsukihime is a piece of blue moon glass. has multiple paths that branch depending on the choices you make at key points in the story. Updating the visual design of the original Tsukihime – and having removed all erotic scenes from it – the 2024 remake contains two original routes (the remaining routes should appear in Tsukihime – The Other Side of the Red Garden.new game without release date) and is available for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4.
On all available routes in Tsukihime is a piece of blue moon glass.All events are viewed from Tohno Shiki's point of view. Your average “anime protagonist”, Shiki is your average dark-haired, unmotivated teenage boy. He leads a normal life, moving from home to school until he meets Arcueid, a young blonde, after returning early from school, but what seems like a chance meeting changes Shiki's life.
By saying “meet you” I'm understating this moment in the game, but explaining exactly what happens would ruin one of the visual novel's biggest surprises. Despite the rather bloody events surrounding their first meeting, Shiki eventually learns the truth about the woman: she is a vampire. Moreover, she hunts another a vampire responsible for numerous murders in his city.
IN TsukihimeThere are two types of vampires. A more traditional version is called “Dead Apostles” – people turned into vampires. Drinking blood is a physiological necessity for Dead Apostles; otherwise, their bodies stop functioning properly. They don't wander around during the day and can even create familiars to do their dirty work. However, Arcueid is a different type of vampire. She is 800 years old and one of the True Ancestors, a more magical and fantastical type of vampire. When Shiki discovers the existence of vampires, he finds himself in a world of legends and real dangers he never knew existed—but a world where he has always belonged.
Despite the fact that Shiki looks like an ordinary teenager, Shiki's life is full of drama. For many years he lived with another family under the orders of his father, Makihisa Tono. If becoming an outcast wasn't enough, shortly before this, Shiki was involved in an accident that nearly killed him. Although young Shiki was still alive, he woke up to find that everything and everyone he looked at was covered in red lines. By tracking them, Shiki learns that he can break anything – from a solid tree to part of his bed – or anyone. To give the child a break, life sends him along a mysterious woman who gives him a special pair of glasses that make his wrinkles disappear as long as he wears them.
Magic glasses, creepy red lines, vampires: these are just some of the fantastic elements included in the composition Tsukihime and rather than feeling like a mash-up of mythologies, the final product is a cohesive and captivating world, thanks to the writing work of the Type-Moon team and its key writer Kinoko Nasu, who conceived and wrote the story. The close attention to world-building will make you fascinated by the universe in which the characters live.
From explaining the functioning of a vampire's physiological system to the different types of vampires, the world is full of potential mysteries. Nasu even came up with an excuse for vampires' preference for killing virgins – their blood is more nutritious. The pace of the first three chapters fluctuates a bit, but after the fourth it's hard to stop reading. It's great to see beautifully written sentences appear against gorgeous backgrounds, as if the thoughts and emotions of the characters fill the screen.
Tsukihime is a piece of blue moon glass. won me over with its script and immersive setting, but it's also an important game that shows the strength of the Japanese indie scene. Type-Moon is a newly formed doujin circle that includes artist Takashi Takeuchi, writer Kinoko Nasu, programmer Nobuyuki Kiyotake, and composer Keita Haga. Takeuchi and Nasu had already worked together on another project (the light novel series Kara no Kyoukai), but it was only together with two others that they began to create Tsukihimeeroge visual novel for windows pc.
The dōjin culture in Japan was already well developed, and a group of artists saw it as a chance to publish their work. As Thomas Grau de Pablo, Ph.D., explains in his article “Between Indie and Doujin: The Making of Japanese Indie” Dōjin describes a movement based on self-published works that are distributed to hobbyists. The origins of the doujin scene can be traced back to the literary circles of Meiji era Japan, which remain strong to this day.
Original TsukihimeThe success turned a group of hobbyists into a full-fledged company that created a series that became extremely successful: the Fate franchise. From games, manga to anime shows, Fate is everywhere and permeates pop culture with famous characters like Saber. This is a gacha game Fate/Grand Orderhas been in production for over ten years, downloaded 12 million times and earned $6 billion in revenue. At the same time anime Fate/Zero included in the top 100 most popular shows according to My anime list, it has been viewed by more than 1.5 million users. at the time of writing this article.
The fundamental work done by Takeuchi, Nasu, Kiyotake and Haga made them famous, but little did they know that the success of this work in the Japanese independent scene would pave the way for the company's success years later, although we rarely see it celebrated. Fortunately, Tsukihime – a piece of blue glass moon breathes life into this work, so it will never disappear from our memories.
